


Nothing Can Be Explained

by Nihonkikuasa211



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Past Relationship(s), Tag to 1x09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6251986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihonkikuasa211/pseuds/Nihonkikuasa211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scene on a rooftop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Can Be Explained

**Author's Note:**

> This scene is mostly inspired by the end of the Three Rivers episode "Where We Lie," or episode six. If I was kind, I would allow them to get back together, but I think the writers will make it a long time before they get together again, just as long as it took them to get together in the first place.

                                                                                    _Nothing Can Be Explained_

 

         Neal could only feel Christa’s warmth as his arms were pulled around her. He felt her head resting against his shoulder, and could hear the faint shaking of her breathing as she continued to bury her head into his shoulder.

            _Christa…_

Even without looking at her, Neal could feel her pain. He felt it beating in her heart, which was desperately trying to contain the wounds that had been reopened. A young girl, dying of cancer, had been brought into the ER. Her eyes had been sunken, her arms and legs as thin as sticks. She was so weak the small child couldn’t even speak. Neal remembered of how her parents had clung to one another, desperately trying to hang onto whatever sanity they had in their living nightmare. The mother, Lucy, had been crying in her husband’s arms as the man shook and continued to stare at his dying little girl with dead eyes. Neal knew there was nothing he could say. How can you expect to understand that kind of pain? But as he looked across the bed with the dying girl too weak to speak and her eyes half-closed, the surgical attending could see Christa. Her blue eyes were drowning in pain. It was as if she was seeing a memory as she stared at the parents and the dying child. Neal remembered of how Christa had been unable to do a procedure on the baby named Tommy. Back then, he had been concerned about the blond resident’s reaction, and when she had told him about why she had reacted the way she did, Neal could only say he was sorry.

            _“I’m not looking for pity.”_

It was never about pity. Neal never pitied her. As he looked across the room to see the blond resident’s agonized gaze as she remembered her own nightmare, the older doctor realized that he still loved the woman who hid so much of her strength. A part of him wanted to walk over to Christa and hold her hand, to explain to her without words that she wasn’t alone. But their relationship didn’t have that kind of intimacy anymore. Neal’s throat closed at the memory of Christa’s words. _“I used to be married. I had a child. I won’t be anybody’s second choice.”_ She couldn’t do this again. Neal understood despite hours later experiencing the same pain he had experienced a year ago. Christa had not only lost her child, but her husband as well when he left her. Seeing him with Grace caused the blond resident to wonder what his feelings truly were…even though they were reflected through every moment he had with her.

            Even now, with a distance between them.

            It didn’t truly matter how long it was since their break-up. Did it truly matter how long it was when that person was no longer by your side? It hurt, Neal thought, to work beside Christa and not be able to say the things he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that Grace meant nothing to him, that she was his past and that the female attending was wrong when she said she knew him.

            Grace didn’t know him at all.

            She had stopped knowing him from the moment she had said no to marrying him.

            _Someday, I had hoped that you would know me more than I know myself, Christa._

Neal had wanted to put his arm around Christa’s shoulders as he watched the little girl named Emily Wilson, with her sunken eyes and a tuft of dark brown hair, died in her parents’ arms. Instead, the man with a breaking heart gently held the dying girl to his chest and placed the girl who had once had so much to live for in her parents’ arms. In the brief moments that they had been able to speak, the mother and father had sobbed that they had decided to stop their six-year old daughter’s treatment. _“It was too painful for her to see her like that,”_ the father Nathan had sobbed as he stroked his wife’s hair. _“Just…too, too painful. Even breathing was difficult for my little girl.”_ Neal could see recognition in Christa’s pained blue eyes as she heard the parents talk to the surgical attending. In that moment, the dark-haired man remembered of what the boy named Jeremy had told him after his elderly father had died. Neal had placed his arm around the shoulder of the boy as he sobbed, hearing the flat line as his elderly father had died. _I couldn’t imagine what he’s going through,_ Neal had thought as he remembered of how the eighteen-year old had once accused him of thinking his father should die because he was old. Through her own experience, Christa had been able to get through Jeremy. And the boy – so young, so alone – had told Neal as his father’s face disappeared in the black body bag, that Christa had helped him.

            _“She said…”_ Jeremy had rasped through his tears as his breathing heaved, _“that not a day goes by that she regrets that she made her son work harder to die.”_ The pained pools of loss haunted Neal, and bored into his own. _“I couldn’t…I couldn’t…”_ The boy heaved into fresh new sobs, and Neal allowed him to cry. When Jeremy held his face his hands, and started shaking, Neal took the child into his arms and held him.

            Just as he was doing to Christa in this present moment.

            She was not crying. That didn’t help the pain growing in Neal as he continued to hold the blond woman in his arms. _There is sadness too deep for tears,_ the surgical attending thought as his heart inwardly clenched at the memory of Christa’s agony. Carefully, he allowed his embrace to tighten around the blond resident, and was relived – so relieved it took his breath away – that she did not pull away. Neal heard the sirens of the ambulance as Christa continued to be held in his arms. All he could sense was that she was with him, in her most unguarded moment, hearing her breathing and heartbeat, her head burrowed into his shoulder.

            As if there was still something between them that Neal still felt.

            It could have been hours or days. It was probably only five seconds. Time seemed to stop when Christa pulled away. Neal could still feel Christa’s heartbreak against his chest as she stared deeply into his eyes.

            “Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice slightly trembled, more than she had when Emily died or when mournful kneeing had come from both of the grieving parents as their daughter laid dead in their arms. She pressed her hands together in a prayer-like positon, where they rested against her lips. Neal took a chance, not once breaking the contact between them, and held her hands in his own. His heartbeat increased with apprehension and he forced himself to continue to look in Christa’s eyes. His hands were still, his breath halting in his chest as he stared at the woman who…

            His hand reached further to caress her wrist. Christa’s blue orbs darkened, and she swallowed.

            _Please,_ Neal stated inwardly. _Please let me in. Don’t blame yourself again. I know you do…_ Inwardly, he flashed backed to the words Grace had said to him. _“In some ways, I think I know you better than anyone.”_

 _I know you’re hurting, Christa, and I know you’re blaming yourself. Because…I know you._ Neal swallowed the sudden emotion building in his throat.

            “I miss you,” he faintly whispered. The voice didn’t sound like it came from him. It rasped, sounded like a dying man.

            Christa didn’t reply. Her eyes rapidly blinked, and it appeared that she wanted to say something but couldn’t. She continued to allow his hand to caress her wrist, never once moving from him. Their eyes connected once more, Christa’s observing the pain coursing through Neal’s face, and the heartbroken blue orbs that haunted Neal since he had watched her walk away echoing through his heart as their faces started to lean to each other.

            _Christa…_ Neal thought. _Christa…_ It seemed to be the only thought he was capable of. He felt as if his heart was about to come out of his chest, and his hands started to shake. _My Christa…_

Christa pulled away a few meters before their lips could connect again. Neal stood still, hoping that whatever he felt now wasn’t seen on his face. He could see Christa’s profile now, looking beautiful as they stood on the rooftop of the hospital with the sun shining behind her.

          “Thank you, Neal.” Her voice was thick, and it sounded as if she was about to cry. She bit her lip, and didn’t look back at the lone attending as she walked away.

          The sound of the door closing didn’t register in Neal’s mind as he suddenly felt as if he would collapse. He looked across the vacant place he was standing in, and suddenly felt the emptiness as his hands clutched the coils of the metal fence. The pain that he had felt throughout the past months suddenly became too much as he thought that he had _almost_ kissed Christa. He bowed his head as the pain filtered through his mind, making the wounds bleed again. The sound of the sirens of the ambulance echoed throughout his ears as Neal thought of Christa, and of the living nightmare she had survived with her son and what they had both witnessed in the ER today. The pain that _he_ felt when she was beside him but he didn’t say anything. Why didn’t he say what he wanted to say to her?

         The door opened again, and Neal turned. Hope and something else was building in his chest, and he tried to not let his disappointment show when it was only Mike standing in the doorway.

         The disappointment that briefly flashed in Neal’s eyes was not missed by Mike, The fellow attending walked towards his friend and grasped his arm, hoping for a reaction. There was none. Neal was still staring at the sun.

        “She held herself up okay until she entered the locker room.” Mike paused and heaved his breath as he saw the empty look on his friend’s face when he looked down at his hands. “I could hear her crying from the hallway.” Mike bit his lip and glanced at Neal, who turned with a blank expression on his face. “I think she’s crying over you and not what happened today.”

        “I know,” Neal stated softly. He closed his eyes briefly, allowing his dark brown eyes to meet with a blue that he wished were someone else’s. “But Mike…nothing can be explained.” His voice cracked at the end.

 _Nothing can be explained…_ Neal thought as tried to heal the wounds in his heart by breathing. _There are…no words for pain such as this._

_Nothing can be explained._


End file.
